Lincoln the athlete

Elbert

Hubbard

Editor

and

Publisher
East Aurora
N. Y.

Vol. 15

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JUNE, 1915 No. 3

THE GOLDEN RULE AS A WORKING POLICY

)ING unto Others as you would be done by requires faith in your fellowmen
Faith in your fellowmen implies a belief that down deep in the heart of every man,
somewhere, is the germ of goodness. Your faith may be a vitalizing ray of sun-
shine reaching that particular germ. In order to perceive the germ of goodness
beneath the rough husk of the workaday world, imagination is required. Imagina-
tion is the power to see the unseen. Faith and imagination mean prescience,
prophetic intelligence, or scientific psychology.

When Marshall Field adopted the maxim, “ The customer is always right ! ” he
displayed great prescience. C[ And the order went forth that no employee should
ever dispute the word of a customer ; so all claims were adjusted instantly on the
word of the customer. c We all like to be thought honest and true. Marshall Field
complimented his customers — his maxim made friends — the trade increased ^
So successful was the policy of faith in the customer that today all great depart-
ment-stores do business on the money-back basis.

Warden Osborne of Sing Sing says that prisoners who do not respond to the Golden Rule are
diseased in body and mind and must be classed as sub-normal.

“ Customers first ! ” is a matter of politeness ; also it is a matter of diplomacy. And as the word
“ diploma ” means a certificate of merit, so is diplomacy itself an example of truth carried into
action

Diplomacy is politeness consideration for the rights and feelings of others. It tokens kindness
and faith in others. Diplomacy is not a mere surface pretense.

Insincere politeness is counterfeit diplomacy. If two men meet in a hallway and begin to con-
verse, then argue, and finally fight, it is a reasonably sure sign that diplomacy has broken down.
CL And the reason it has broken down is because one or both of the men lack either one or both
of two things. These things are commonsense and right intent, d Burglars lack both ; and the
proof that burglars lack commonsense is that they adopt a very costly way of securing things
Men who consider themselves better, wiser and more able than other men will not be diplomatic,
d Such know nothing of the Golden Rule, save as a theory. They believe in the rascality of
others, not their goodness. Hence they appeal to force.

It is the same with nations. When diplomacy breaks down, war follows. And war never occurs
until diplomacy is cast aside.

If governmental diplomats were really diplomatic, war would be an impossibility.

The Golden Rule in trade has been proven a safe, sound and paying policy.

Salesmen who sell goods have to sell themselves first. \Ve give no orders to people we regard as
possible rogues, cheats, pretenders and hypocrites, d Diplomats who resort to violence are
salesmen who have failed to sell themselves. In order to “ sell yourself ” you must be both
buyer and seller. You must in imagination put yourself in place of the other man. Then only can
you do unto others as if you were the others, d Personal quarrels and national wars mean that
somebody was n’t big enough to live up to the Golden Rule.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2015

https://archive.org/details/lincolnathleteOOroge

June

“THE FRFI

Ninety-five

^ 1 !

LINCOLN THE ATHLETE

By James Frederick Rogers, M. D.

i J - p. ■

T

The two most athletic figures in the his-
tory of our country, if not of all history,
were those of Washington and Lincoln.
€[ In appearance Lincoln was as homely and
awkward as Washington was handsome and
full of grace; but in physical prowess they
were well matched, and the accounts of their
feats of strength read very much alike
Probably many of these stories have become
exaggerated in the telling, but it is only of a
Hercules that Herculean tales are told. While
both excelled in athletic sports, both preferred
mental accomplishments to physical feats ;
both were surveyors ; both took part in Indian
wars; finally, both became President in the
most trying times the nation has seen. Here the
likeness of their experiences ends; for Wash-
ington was bom and bred in comparative
comfort and culture, and sought the primitive
life of the wilderness temporarily, and rather
from pleasure than from necessity. Lincoln,
until he was of age, knew only poverty, toil
and the mdest society, and only by mighty
efforts dragged himself into less cmde sur-
roundings. The homely lines of his counte-
nance, which appeal to us more than the
statuesque repose of his great predecessor,
were carved deep by his trying experiences
and the sympathies they developed.

Lincoln’s Parentage

Lincoln came of a line of vigorous
pioneers. His father is described as five
feet ten inches high ; he weighed one hundred
eighty pounds, and “ was sinewy and brave.”
His mother was of medium stature, slender
and symmetrical, good-looking, if not beauti-
ful, as a girl, but early bent and worn by her
hard life.

The home which first sheltered Lincoln was a
rude, one-room cabin, nearly bare of furniture
or furnishings of any sort ; and the other con-
ditions by which he was surrounded were so
rude and primitive that only a sturdy child
could have survived.

r

T

As he grew up, he lived the open-air life. He
“ ran the woods ” with the older boys, hunt-
ing woodchucks and treeing coons. He was
early set to work “ bringing tools, carrying
water, picking berries, and planting seed.”
His Indiana Home

rIE removal of the family to Indiana was
a change from the woods to the back-
woods, from the frying-pan into the fire, as
far as conditions of living were concerned.
Their new dwelling-place, which Abraham
helped to build, was a “ half-faced camp ”
fourteen feet square, merely a shed with three
sides, open to the weather on the fourth side —
a shelter “ less snug than the winter cave of a
bear.” After the first season, this abode was
exchanged for what was little improvement — a
floorless, windowless cabin, without even a
deerskin to close the doorway. Abraham had
for his bed a heap of dry leaves and old
clothes, with skins for covering, in a comer of
the loft, to which he climbed by means of pegs
driven in the wall.

There was plenty of food, but com bread,
baked in a Dutch oven, was the chief item on
the bill of fare. Potatoes, which were the only
plentiful vegetable, were often served raw, as
we would serve apples. There was abundance
of deer and bear meat, pheasants, wild tur-
keys, ducks, squirrels, fish and wild fmits ^
Young Abraham’s scanty shirt and trousers
were of coarse, homemade material and he
was crowned with a coonskin cap.

His attendance of a few months at the district
school did not detract from his vigor. The
curriculum was not crowded in those days;
there were no problems of ventilation ; and
about the only physical disaster that came to
any pupil was a sound whipping from the
master

His Boyhood

The boy was large and remarkably strong
for his years, and already he was given
plenty of hard work to do. He said of himself

Ninety-six

June

THE

that when he was about eight years old, his
father “ placed an ax in his hand, and till
within his twenty-third year he was almost
constantly handling that most useful instru-
ment,” He cleared land, split firewood and
fence-rails, plowed, reaped with a sickle,
thrashed with a flail, and did carpentering
When not working for his father, he was hired
out to the neighbors for any and all work.
During the noon recess and after work hours
he enjoyed swimming, jumping, running and
wrestling — enjoyed them the more because
he excelled in these sports. Unlike Washington,
he cared little for dancing. He had no liking
for hunting, after shooting his first wild,
turkey, at the age of eight : he had too much
feeling for the wild life. He hated fishing, but
went many times with a district-school teacher
who was fond of the sport. Lincoln went with
him to catch the schoolmaster’s talk and to
learn from him of Shakespeare and Bums.
C. He frequently walked fifteen or twenty
miles to secure books, to hear speeches or to
attend debates. For a few months he ran a
ferryboat, and when nineteen years of age he
worked the bow oars on a boat bound for New
Orleans. He is described at this time as “ a
long, thin, gawky boy, dried up and shriveled.”
Illinois

N Eighteen Hundred Thirty the family was
on the move again, this time for Illinois.
Here young Lincoln helped his father build
another mde cabin, split rails to fence ten
acres of land, and raised a crop of com.

On coming of age, he was without sufficient
money to purchase a much-needed pair of
new trousers, and for these he “ split four
hundred rails for each yard of the material
used.” The trousers were secured more quickly
than they would have been by most young
men, for Lincoln was a famous chopper ; as his
cousin says, “ If you heard him felling trees
in the clearing, you would say there were
three men at work by the way the trees fell.”
After the Black Hawk War, in which Lincoln
was a volunteer, he thought of making use of
his strength as a blacksmith, but instead
became a storekeeper.

Partly because of his great physical powers he
was the recognized peacemaker in the mde
and lawless community in which he lived ;
and as candidate for political office his
physical prowess helped him not a little in
winning the hearts of the rougher classes

PRFI

Finally, this sinewy giant was chosen to
wrestle with all his combined powers of body
and mind with the gravest problems of a
nation, and to bear on his shoulders the burden
of sorrow and trial of a great people.

An Excellent Constitution

The picture of Lincoln, with its expression
of quiet humor or of gentle sadness, is a
familiar one. It was a homely face, with a
high, broad forehead overhung with stiff,
black hair ; with dark-gray eyes, clear and very
expressive ; high cheek-bones and large mouth.
He was six feet four inches tall, and weighed
about one hundred eighty pounds. He was
“ thin through the chest, narrow across the
shoulders, and stooped slightly as he walked.
His complexion was very dark, his skin yellow
and shriveled.” His limbs were long, and he
had large hands and feet. “ There was no
grace in his movement, but an expression of
awkwardness combined with force and vigor.”
CL Like most great men, Lincoln was exceed-
ingly temperate and simple in his habits.
Though his table at Springfield was famed for
the excellence of its Keritucky dishes, he was
a moderate eater. He used neither tobacco nor
intoxicating drinks, and he was a strong advo-
cate of total abstinence. While a lawyer he
kept a horse and a cow, and took care of both
with his own hands; and he chopped all the
firewood for the house.

In the stress of affairs in Washington he often
became indifferent not only as to the character
of his meals, but as to the time they were
served. “ It seemed some weeks as if he neither
ate nor slept.” He was never sick ; but during
the war, “ the anxiety, responsibility, care,
thought, disasters, defeats, and the injustice
of his friends, wore upon his giant frame, and
his nerves of steel became at times irritable.”
He walked and rode about the capital ; but
when others fled its heat and dust, he remained
at his post.

The physical history of this wonderful man
may be summed up in the remark of his
friend, Nat Grigsby, “ He had an excellent
constitution and took care of it.” It served
him and his country nobly until shattered by
the bullet of the assassin.

Once we thought work was a curse ; then it
came to us that it was a necessary evil ; and
yesterday the truth dawned upon us that it
is a blessed privilege.